by JK Stone
Terrah looked between Jason and Alise and said, “When we arrive at Anukan I’ll begin scanning the planet and see what I can find,” and taking Doran’s hand, Terrah led him down the corridor.
Terrah had just entered the control room, and Alise called Terrah over and brought up a geographical overlay on the wall monitor.
“You may want to begin your scans there,” Alise pointed to an area on the outskirts of what looked like an ancient ruined city, then added, “That dried-up lake bed is where the Imortum battleship was before it took off. Our ships are still a couple weeks away with escorting Saleria’s ship to the pyramids generator at Daregon before we can head to Anukan.”
Doran looked toward Alise and said, “You will save at least seven to eight days if you take TDS 2 to Toro’dal to recharge. Then you will all be able to travel at full speed, that is if the pyramids generator is still there?” he stated questioningly.
Alise nodded. “It’s still there, but usually we’d avoid that planet being a single ship with the rampant piracy in that solar system, but with several of our ships on overwatch as Saleria charges, TDS 2 should be fine. I’ll arrange the course change with everyone. If you will excuse me.”
As Alise turned and exited the room, Terrah heard Alise calling out and coordinating the course change with the other ships.
“Well, it looks as if we have a few things to talk over, and possibly more after you look into Gallos’s memories. Let me know what you find, and then we can call a meeting,” Jason said.
Terrah nodded and said, “That sounds good. We’ll call over if we find anything or need assistance,” then Terrah squeezed Doran’s hand and they headed back to their ship.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Doran and Terrah stepped through the archway onto their ship and a moment later Doran pulled her into an embrace and kissed her soundly. The effect of the Ambrose was still present in his system, but he knew that he would have to put that on hold for now. Pulling back, he peered into Terrah’s eyes and said, “I can think of a few things I would rather be doing, but I need to search the database.”
Terrah looked disappointed but nodded. “You’re right,” she said as she took his hand and they made their way to the control room of their ship and each of them took their seats.
Terrah said, “I’ve launched the probe. We should be able to begin scanning in a little over three hours. I think I’ll look into a few things as well.”
“Just nudge me if you need anything, I can get pretty distracted while sifting through Gallos’s memories,” Doran smiled warmly as he stated that.
Terrah stood, stepped closer and kissed Doran on the cheek. “I’ll figure something out to remove the distractions when I need you,” Terrah said with a seductive wink.
Doran chuckled. There were a few things he could think of that would pull him back, and he couldn’t wait to see what Terrah would come up with, and he began sifting.
Doran started with the memory of when Gallos had decided to take up his hobby on their first lull in activity. They had traveled from one galaxy to another speaking with whatever historians they could find. Most of the cultures would pass down histories using oral history, but those were very inconsistent.
However, on very rare occasions Gallos would come across ancient tomes, texts, and scrolls. When he did, Gallos would not only read them thoroughly, he would also scan the items into the ships permanent memory to ensure they were protected from the ravages of time as well as anti-historical zealots that tended to rise from time to time and destroy anything that would disprove their current belief system.
Doran found that the Imortum were a reclusive people near the end of their reign. The prior history was more of rumor, myth, and conjecture at that point.
When Gallos would happen upon someone who swore they knew facts about the Imortum, often times other facts would disprove the prior.
One fact seemed to rise to the forefront of all of the tales no matter how fanciful. The race called the Nefastus did exist, and there was a great war between them and the Imortum, ending with the destruction of millions of solar systems and countless dead.
The glorified tales told of grand ships being built to combat the Nefastus scourge, only to have the Imortum almost be wiped out of existence despite having the better ships. The assumption ran that the Nefastus must have built better and more destructive vessels.
As to who the Nefastus were, the speculation fell back to an ancient rumor that the Imortum, prior to evolving to be immortal, dabbled in cloning which led to a rift in the Imortum race that caused the war.
Doran was just about to pull out of the memories when he felt a warm moist sensation on his ear. Doran’s eyes popped open and he smiled at finding Terrah suckling on his earlobe.
Terrah laughed and said, “I told you I could find a way to remove the distractions. So, did you find anything of use?”
Doran chuckled and replied, “Nothing definitive, most of the information was in the form of rumor or legend. There were very few records kept from the Imortum reign. The most I will be able to give the group is a speculative guess.”
Terrah sighed and said, “Well our probe is in orbit of Anukan and we’ve begun our scans.”
Doran slid his seat over to the Science console and Terrah glided her seat past the weapons console and around his back and came to rest on Doran’s other side of the Science console.
Doran smirked at Terrah’s obvious amusement at zipping around in her seat and watched intently as she performed multi-spacial as well as temporal scans of the solar system, then took the probe into the orbit of Anukan.
After finding nothing dangerous in orbit, Terrah then moved the probe twenty-four hours in each direction with the same result.
“Well it looks as if we’re in the clear for now,” Terrah said, and she directed the probe to the location Alise had pointed out.
Terrah drew in a sharp breath and said, “Damn, that must’ve been where the battleship busted out of the ground, it looks like a mini crater. Let’s see if there’s anything of interest left down there.”
Terrah flew her probe down into the crater and then performed a grid search for any signals or unique trace materials.
“There must’ve been thousands upon thousands of humanoids that died down there, what kind of life forms were those?” Terrah pointed to her display.
Doran examined her scan data, and then he said, “The majority of them look to be insectoids,” Doran activated a Chrono scan of the remains and once the scan had completed he added, “The remains appear to date back from several thousands of years to as recently as a few months ago. And by the amount of broken down biomatter I am seeing, I would estimate that there were far more lifeforms down there before that, but most of their bodies have decomposed into base mineral forms by now.”
Doran peered over at Terrah and could tell she wanted to know more. Doran thought about it a moment, then added, “Gebb and the others must have used them as slave laborers to dig down to the ship. The conditions on the surface of Anukan would have been fatal within hours to humanoids even with radiation suits on. That insectoid race was more than likely resistant to the radiation, and Gebb would have used them to make the passage deep enough to be able to send humanoids down there.”
Terrah was shaking her head in apparent disgust and had just maneuvered the probe out and set it on a low orbital scan when Doran noticed a low energy pulse on the display.
“Send the probe back a moment, I think I saw something,” Doran said, but Terrah must have seen the same thing because she had already redirected the probe back into the crater.
“I thought I saw something as well,” Terrah replied.
The probe was circling back in and Terrah asked, “Could it have been a radiation or gravitational echo? No… there it is.”
Doran saw the reading again and said, “Whatever is causing the spikes could be out of phase, there appears to be a temporal gradient to the signal.”
Terrah n
odded and shifted the probe from a negative point five TD to a positive point five. “There’s something down there,” Terrah backed the TD down by point five until it was clearly in view.
“It is a damaged probe from one of these TDS ships,” Doran announced.
Terrah got a lock on the damaged probe and transported it to their ship. Then it looked as if she set her probe to perform a detailed scan of Anukan from the opposite side of the planet.
Terrah looked at Doran and said, “If we scan from the dark side of the planet, it should reduce the interference we’re seeing from the background radiation and gravitational waves,” Terrah said that as if she had done it a million times.
Doran had been watching Terrah as she worked, and he was amazed at how fast she took to being the commander. In the past, it would take a commander several years to be as comfortable with operating the ship as she demonstrated.
Remembering she had transported the damaged probe to the Decontamination room, Doran activated the decontamination process on the probe and said, “We can go have a look at it. I had to adjust our TD to that of the probe to decontaminate and interact with it.”
*****
Both Doran and Terrah stood and made their way to Decon. Once inside Terrah tried to interface with the probe, but there was no response from it. Terrah sighed then tried to upload the data the probe had stored, but that didn’t work either. Terrah then made an attempt to store the probe in base storage, but nothing happened. Frustrated at the lack of success Terrah made her way to the wall monitor and consulted it.
The readout showed a Sequential Anomaly ‘Item already exists’ error. Shaking her head, Terrah said, “We can’t do anything with the probe on our ship. I think we have to take it back to the ship it originated on, and if I’m correct, it’s probably the probe Calia sent down there before the battleship took off.”
Terrah opened her communications and called out, “Calia, are you busy?”
“Not at the moment Terrah, what can I do for you?”
“We recovered a probe from the crater where the battleship was on Anukan, it won’t let us access it so we figured if it is yours, then maybe you could pull the information from it. It gave me a sequential anomaly item already exists error. Do you mind if we bring it over?”
“Not at all, we’ve seen that error a few times already as well. Do you need me to do anything ahead of time?” Calia asked.
Terrah thought about it and replied, “The probe is in a positive point two five TD, you may have to be in the same phase to interact with it. It was damaged and it’s apparently stuck in that phase.”
“Got it, we’re ready when you are,” Calia ended with a cheerful tone.
Terrah turned to the probe and reached out to take ahold of it. As soon as her hands made contact, she felt a strange wave of energy pass over her.
“What! Where did you go?” Doran shouted.
Terrah chortled and said, “When I grasped the probe it must’ve phase shifted me as well,” Terrah removed her hand from the probe and came back into phase, so she picked the probe up and said, “The phasing seems to be temporary, just follow me over to TDS 3.”
“I want to see if I can see you with my armor activated,” Doran stated.
A second later he was covered head to foot, and he let out a curious sound.
“What?” Terrah asked.
“This is an odd vision, I can see you now, but you seem to be shifting through multiple phases. Alright, let us get this over with,” Doran said sounding nervous.
*****
Doran followed Terrah into the master control room and he was surprised to find Vellia sitting at a console.
Vellia smiled up at Doran. “Hello,” she said, as she looked behind him then asked, “Is Terrah coming over?”
Terrah tried to answer her, but Vellia didn’t have a suit on, so she couldn’t hear her.
Terrah asked, “Could you let Vellia know I’m here?”
Doran chuckled and replied, “Terrah is already here. She is carrying a probe that phase shifted her. We are taking it to TDS 3 to see if it has anything useful on it.” Doran could tell that he had piqued Vellia’s interest and added, “You can accompany us if you wish.”
Vellia peered back at the TDS 3 archway looking a bit hesitant, and then she popped out of her chair and followed them through the archway.
*****
Doran, Terrah, and Vellia had just entered TDS 3 when Calia entered the engine room, and Calia looked at Doran then she asked, “What is with the armor?”
Terrah laughed and said, “It’s the only way he could see me, the probe phase shifted me when I grabbed ahold of it.”
“Ah… okay, that makes sense,” Calia activated her armor and said, “that’s strange. Follow me, we have a workbench set up in decontamination to examine the probe on.”
Terrah followed Calia in and placed the probe on the bench. Once she was no longer in contact with the probe, both she and the probe appeared again, smiling Terrah said, “That was interesting. Well, let’s see if you can get anything out of it.”
Calia began a scan and a moment later she said, “Well, that’s definitely our probe. It’s the one I was scanning the battleship with just before it went active and burst out of the ground. The probe looks as if it took damage when the battleship’s gravitational drive activated… There it’s uploading all of the data stored on it.”
A minute or so later Calia said, “It appears as if the probe had a single unimpeded scan cycle between the battleship’s energy field dispersing, and the gravitational drive activating before the probe was hit. The scan shows no active life signs onboard, just an AI by the look of it and five dead humanoid bodies before the probe was deactivated, and not much else I’m afraid.”
Terrah sighed and said, “I guess we have to go back to our probe then. It should be finished scanning Anukan in about twenty-nine hours.”
Vellia approached Calia and asked, “Would you mind if I took a closer look at the probe and data? It’s fascinating.”
Calia smiled at Vellia and said, “Not at all, I’ll leave it in here for you.”
Terrah laughed and said, “Just like when we were younger, you were always tearing into things to see how they worked.”
Vellia chuckled in response then replied, “Yes well we always had better television reception after I tinkered with them.”
Terrah laughed, gave her sister and Calia a hug then told them she would see them later and smiling at Doran, she took him by the hand and they left for their ship.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Terrah sat down at her console and said, “Well, so much for an easy mission, we must be looking for the needle in this haystack.”
Doran looked at her confusedly and Terrah explained, “It’s an old Earth saying, it just means this is going to be difficult.”
Terrah brought up her probes positioning and a little confused herself she said, “What the?! … How did it get in there?”
“What is the matter?” Doran asked as he slid his seat beside her.
Terrah examined the probes programming and said, “That’s strange, the probe was redirected down an old ventilation shaft. It interfaced with a computer in some kind of bunker. It looks as if it happened just after we went over to TDS 3.”
Doran was looking over the probes sensor log, and peering oddly at her he said, “The probes memory is almost filled. That is—
“The upload is complete and the probe is returning to us. Should we be concerned?” Terrah looked at Doran for his answer.
Doran ran his hand through his hair and said, “I have no idea, I have never seen that happen before. The fact that the probe’s memory is almost completely filled is baffling. I have sent probes out scanning for years on end and we never came close to filling its memory, and I did not think we were away from the ship long enough for that to happen.”
Terrah was a little concerned about just bringing the probe aboard the ship, she remembered her computer getting
a virus once, and she worried that this could be a very good way to introduce one into her ship. “We need to isolate the probe and not allow it to interface with the ship until we know it’s safe,” she stated.
Terrah created the same kind of isolated workstation in the Decontamination room as Calia did on TDS 3, and once she had transported the probe aboard, both she and Doran went to Decon and began sifting through what she could only describe as an immortal’s lifetime worth of data.
They had decided to approach the information from opposite ends, so Doran began at the beginning and Terrah decided to begin with the most recent entries.
*****
A few hours later Doran sighed and said, “This data goes back much further than the Lantins arrival on Anukan. There are encrypted files at the beginning of the entries, but I have never seen anything like the language it is in, and I would not have the first idea how to access the files.”
Terrah halted her perusal of her section of the data and peered over at what Doran was talking about. She stared at the display and something itched at her mind when she was looking at it.
Just when Terrah felt she was beginning to get a grasp on the language, the feeling flitted away. Shaking her head, she replied, “I don’t know, I thought it looked familiar for a second, but now it looks like gibberish. What do you make of this?” Terrah pointed at her display.
Doran examined it a moment and said, “It looks like a distress beacon, the signal was faint though,” He frowned as he performed a directional scan of the signal to locate its source and said, “This is strange. The signal you have there was activated almost a thousand years ago. It originated where the battleship was buried, but being so deep under the surface it prevented the signal from leaving the planet.”